Sunday, February 23, 2014

The Ship of the Sun is Drawn 1

I got the revolution blues, I see bloody fountains, And ten million dune buggies comin' down the mountains.Well, I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars,But I hate them worse than lepers and I'll kill them in their cars.

The
spaghetti theory of conspiracy is nothing if not psychedelic. In a
psychedelic fashion, though, conspiracy theory loops back upon itself,
paranoid and snarling. As I've tried to show with theseposts
just as conspiracies extend and branch out from the tiniest biological
organisms to the realm of the gods themselves, conspiracy theorizing is likewise diverse, contradictory and in a marginal existence of ceaseless vicissitude.

For
this reason conspiracy theories about the psychedelic movement
especially, one would think, should mirror the groundless, fluctuating
nature of their subject. Not necessarily so. In very recent years, in
contrast, there is a fast-growing tendency to conclude that the
psychedelic movement emerging out of the sixties and continuing in
fractured pieces even today can be explained very simply: the whole
tie-dyed cloth was designed and manufactured by the malefic Powers That
Be.

A Deliberate Creation

This is exactly the thesis of a May, 2013 article
by Joe Atwill and Jan Irvin entitled, "Manufacturing the Deadhead: A
product of social engineering." Beyond the title itself, the authors
explicitly state their full thesis early on in the long essay.

Most today assume that the CIA and the other intelligence-gathering
organizations of the U.S. government are controlled by the democratic
process. They therefore believe that MK-ULTRA’s role in creating the
psychedelic movement was accidental “blowback.” Very few have even
considered the possibility that the entire “counterculture” was social
engineering planned to debase America’s culture – as the name implies.
The authors believe, however, that there is compelling evidence that
indicates that the psychedelic movement was deliberately created. The
purpose of this plan was to establish a neo-feudalism by the debasing of
the intellectual abilities of young people to make them as easy to
control as the serfs of the Dark Ages.

Such
a thesis, denying "blowback," accidents, spontaneity, unforeseen
consequences, unpredictability, limited autonomy, etc. is thoroughly
absolutist in nature. Absolutist conspiracy theories, as explored in
previous posts, however satisfactory they are in creating a
comprehensive narrative to ostensibly explain the current sociopolitical
reality, do not accurately reflect the complexity and nuances that make
up that reality.

There is really no doubt that
government and far more nefarious agencies were and are involved in
promoting and "manufacturing" various aspects of the psychedelic
counterculture. The name of their game, after all, is control. However,
we go far astray in our analysis, I believe, when we conclude that every facet
of this movement was contrived and engineered from the get go. Such a
conclusion is not only inaccurate, failing to account for obvious
complexity, but it also robs us of taking inspiration in and gaining
knowledge from genuinely liberatory elements of the sixties counterculture.

It is crucial that we attempt to know precisely how we are being
manipulated and hoodwinked, and in this the research of Atwill and
Irvin, as well as others like Dave McGown, is indispensable. We must not
cling to illusions. But we must also not make the opposite mistake. The
same dominant faction that gains from tweaking and prodding the
counterculture in desired directions also gains in the widespread
acceptance of conspiracy and revisionist theories that reject the
counterculture in total. Such theories promote paralysis in the face of a
seemingly omnipotent elite and they also severely limit our own options
of resistance.

The present post, then, will not try to
demonstrate that the counterculture which captured the attention of the
world in the sixties and onward is wholly good. Neither, though, will
it conclude, along with Atwill and Irvin that it was and is just a
product of social engineering, just a colossal hoodwink. Instead I hope
to show that any comprehensive theory of the psychedelic movement, and
similar movements, must be psychedelic in itself -- spaghetti-like. This
doesn't make for an easy-to-grasp, black-and-white, Hollywood
storyline, but is reality ever really like this?

Mud humping

There is no need for a point-by-point
refutation of Atwill and Irvin's article. Much of their research appears
pretty sound. Jan Irvin's research on R. Gordon Wasson is especially
revealing and alarming if accurate. The authors present a somewhat
garbled grab-bag of every available anti-counterculture conspiracy
theory and criticism, from Timothy Leary being a CIA spy to Woodstock
being a designed spectacle to debase US culture through its images of
stoned hippies humping in the mud. The John Birch Society in its heyday
likely could not have produced a more damning indictment.

Unlike
the more conventional right-wing based attacks on the counterculture,
however, which made the case that the hippies were a sort of Trojan
Horse for world communism, Atwill and Irvin go much further in their
conclusions. The goal of the Agenda, as we've seen, is not communism but
a neo-feudal Dark Age featuring eugenics, depopulation and near
universal, back-breaking servitude for the masses.

Where
did Irvin and Atwill come up with this horrific vision of the near
future? In fact, their view is not so different from other absolutist
conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and especially the very articulate
Alan Watt. If there is a "mainstream" of absolutist conspiracy
theorizing Irvin and Atwill fall firmly within it. If anything, though,
it is their emphasis that makes them unique. To bring about this New
Word Order of shit-kicking peasant stinkards and their transhuman lords
and masters, they conclude, the psychedelic movement was absolutely
essential.

As evidence for this Agenda the authors
cite the work of Terence McKenna. Didn't McKenna, the indefatigable
psychedelic evangelist, constantly promote the idea of an Archaic
Revival? Isn't the Archaic Revival entirely synonymous with the Dark
Age? Didn't McKenna admit in an interview, published in The Archaic Revival and quoted by Atwill and Irvin, that he was a "soft Dark Ager"?

I
guess I'm a soft Dark Ager. I think there will be a mild dark age. I
don’t think it will be anything like the dark ages that lasted a
thousand years...

This certainly
appears to condemn McKenna. He is clearly advocating neo-feudalism! He
must be an agent of the Agenda! It is worthwhile, though, to look up
McKenna's entire quote. Jan Irvin, to his credit, constantly exhorts his
readers to check his facts. I'll take his advice. McKenna is asked if
he thought, in agreement with certain futurists, that humanity would have
to pass through a new dark age in order to attain a higher state of
collective consciousness. Here's his full response:

I
guess I'm a soft Dark Ager. I think there will be a mild Dark Age. I
don't think it will be anything like the Dark Ages which lasted a
thousand years -- I think it will last more like five years -- and will
be a time of economic retraction, religious fundamentalism, retreat into
closed communities by certain segments of the society, feudal warfare
among minor states, and this sort of thing. I think it will give way in
the late '90s to the actual global future that we're all yearning for.
Then there will be basically a 15-year period where all these things are
drawn together with progressively greater and greater sophistication,
much in the way that modern science, and philosophy has grown with
greater and greater sophistication in a single direction since the
Renaissance. Sometime around the end of 2012, all of this will be boiled
down into a kind of alchemical distillation of the historical
experience that will be a doorway into the life of the imagination.

Terence
is obviously quite off in his timing but there is no indication that he
is in any way advocating a new Dark Age as a positive end for social
control -- quite the contrary. He is saying that there may unfortunately
be a wholly undesirable and unnecessary, yet extremely brief, period of
reaction before the real goal emerges: the "doorway into the life of the imagination."

It is readily apparent to anyone spends any amount of time listening to or reading Terence McKenna that he is in no way
an advocate for a Dark Age as he defines it -- economic retraction,
fundamentalism, closed communities, feudal warfare, etc. His advocacy of
the Archaic Revival, on the other hand, is completely antithetical to
this. And, once again, McKenna is very lucid in what he means by this
term.

Terence argues that in a time of general crisis a
society will naturally look back to a time in its history when possible
solutions or the means of resolving the current crisis might be found.
Thus, during the dissolution of the medieval worldview individual
Europeans turned to the classical age of Rome and Greece to find new
inspiration, resulting in the Renaissance.

McKenna, an
admirer of both the Renaissance and classical Greece, concludes that the
combined crises of modernity are so dire that we must look back even
further to a time before the State, before organized religion, before the hierarchical stratification of society, before the severing of humanity's link with the rest of nature -- all key features of both the Dark Age and today.

This time is found in the long archaic
(not ancient and definitely not medieval or feudal) age of the
paleolithic. And, to anticipate a stupid objection, McKenna is not
advocating a return to the Old Stone Age. He is saying that there are
many things that we urgently need to learn from our "primitive"
ancestors and still existing hunter-gatherer tribes.

Fortunately,
movements in art and in the wider culture and counterculture have from the
late-19th century onward attempted to learn these lessons. Anyone who
would equate the terms "Archaic Revival" with "Dark Age" in McKenna is
either completely missing the point or is consciously misrepresenting
his message.

The Fungal Bureau of Intoxication

Could it be,
though, that McKenna is being devious in his presentation? If, as Irvin
and Atwill assert, McKenna is an agent of the nefarious Agenda then isn't
it very possible that he is seducing people with his highly-cultivated
charm and elocution to accept a vision of the Archaic Revival which is
actually something completely opposite to what he says it is, namely a
new Dark Age? If this is the case, Irvin and Atwill present no evidence
of it. Irvin does claim, however, to have caught McKenna admitting
that he is just this sort of agent.

Irvin presents this evidence, "an explosive audio clip," in an article
from August of last year explosively entitled, "NEW MKULTRA DISCOVERY:
Terence McKenna admited that he was a “deep background” and “PR” agent
(CIA or FBI)." The clip can be listened to here, but this is the damning quotation:

And
certainly when I reached La Chorerra in 1971 I had a price on my head
by the FBI, I was running out of money, I was at the end of my rope. And
then THEY recruited me [laughter from his audience] and said, “you
know, with a mouth like yours there’s a place for you in our
organization." And I’ve worked in deep background positions about which
the less said the better. And then about 15 years ago THEY shifted me
into public relations and I’ve been there to the present.

What is conspicuously absent from Jan Irvin's account of this is the laughter.
McKenna's audience during the talk and nearly all of his subsequent
listeners have realized that Terence is making a joke about being
recruited by the Mushroom. Absolutist conspiracy theorists, in contrast,
are notorious for not having a sense of humour. In objection to this fairly basic interpretation of McKenna's words Jan Irvin reveals
that he is definitely well within the absolutist camp:

1) Do mushrooms have organizations, deep background and public relations (propaganda)? Or does a spy agency?2) What would mushrooms need with a public relations or propaganda department? Or is that something a spy agency would have?3)
Would mushrooms tell him the less said the better: “deep background
positions about which the less said the better”, or is that something an
agency would do?4) Do mushrooms have “positions”? Or does an agency?5)
Are the mushrooms able to pay him because he’s out of money? Or is that
something an agency could do? (remember he’s in trouble for smuggling)6)
Are mushrooms able to get him out of trouble with Interpol and the FBI
for DRUG SMUGGLING? Or is that something an agency like the CIA or FBI
could do?7) Do mushrooms answer the story of what happened to him
after his arrest? Or is that something that his employment as an agent
would do?

Wow. Irvin does seem to have
a point (or seven!) here. All those who laughed will surely not laugh
last. The evidence is in! If there is anything, though, to take
seriously I think it is McKenna's confession that he was recruited by the Mushroom. He is admitting
to a conspiracy here, and it is one that is far vaster in scope than
anything the CIA and the FBI combined could think up. Irvin,
unfortunately, does not appear to take this sort of conspiracy
seriously.

The less interesting, more banal story of McKenna as FBI/CIA agent has been thoroughly "debunked" elsewhere on the web so there is no reason to go over the boring business again here. It is
interesting (and funny) to hear Terence's brother Dennis' take on the
whole thing. Here is Dennis in an interview from May, 2013 (at 35
minutes in):

I just feel
kind of sorry for Jan, actually. He seems to have this need to see
conspiracies where none exist.... This is the web of delusion that you
can fall into if you're not careful and I think he has. ... It looks
like pathology to me, and a lot of people see that. But then Jan will
say, well, you won't go through these 20 databases that I've sent you
and these 200 links. And you've got to understand, no Jan I won't,
because for one thing I don't have time and the fact there are
connections does not necessarily a conspiracy make. I mean, yeah,
Terence talked at Esalen and Aldous Huxley talked at Esalen that doesn't
mean that Esalen is involved in some plot for world domination. ... I
just don't buy it. It just seems like a waste of time. ... I would
think I would know that [Terence was an agent]. I would think he would
have said something. You know, we were close. But then maybe he was but
he didn't even know he was. I don't think so. I don't know if you've
seen Jan's website? What is that? This is... like the [Terence's] Timewave in a way -- this elaborate model that you come up with that explains all and everything if you could just see it. I'm not seeing it, Jan, sorry.

Pathology
or not (and, to be fair, Dennis is calling his brother similarly nuts), the
obvious response for an absolutist conspiracy theorist would be to
claim that Dennis is also a part of the conspiracy. This is essentially
Jan's response. A big deal will be made out the fact that Dennis didn't
directly deny that his brother was an agent. This, according to absolutist logic, is tantamount to admitting that he was an agent.

If
this was all Irvin and Atwill had on Terence McKenna it would seem like
pretty flimsy stuff. Yet of course this is not their full argument. As
Dennis explains, Terence is condemned for connections, real or illusory,
that he had with institutions and people like Esalen, Huxley, Teilhard
de Chardin, Marshall McLuhan, etc. As a lover of synchronicity I will
accept all of these connections and more. I just doubt that any of these
prove that McKenna was, consciously or not, working for an Agenda to
enslave humanity.

For me to try to refute these assertions would involve plunging into the "20 databases" and "200 links"
and that is not really my purpose here. McKenna himself is only one
small facet of Atwill and Irvin's mega-thesis and even to definitively
prove that McKenna was a saint, which he by no means was, would not
really shake the core of their claim. It is a good idea to look into
some of this research, though, just to see if it stands up to scrutiny.

A Dose Of Disinfo

Another key player in the
conspiracy, according to Atwill and Irvin, is Albert Hofmann, the
inventor of LSD. If a psychedelic conspiracy really exists then Hofmann
has got to be in the thick of it, right? Atwill and Irvin present their
most damning evidence against Hofmann:

Though
like many of those associated with the origins of the psychedelic
movement, Albert Hofmann is called “divine,” evidence has come to light
which exposes him as both a CIA and French Intelligence operative.
Hoffman helped the agency dose the French village Pont Saint Esprit with
LSD. As a result five people died and Hofmann helped to cover up the
crime.The LSD event at Pont Saint Esprit led to the famous murder of Frank Olson by the CIA because he had threatened to go public.

A footnote informs us that this "evidence" is taken from journalist Hank Albarelli's 2009 book, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments. If we look into the mass poisoning event
in Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951, we quickly find that Albarelli is about
the only person claiming that the CIA dosed the village with LSD. Steven
Kaplan, a professor of history at Cornell University who also wrote a
book about the events of the French village, has described Albarelli's
theory as "absurd."

I have numerous objections to this paltry evidence against the CIA.
First of all, it’s clinically incoherent: LSD takes effects in just a
few hours, whereas the inhabitants showed symptoms only after 36 hours
or more. Furthermore, LSD does not cause the digestive ailments or the
vegetative effects described by the townspeople...

Now
it could be that Kaplan is himself a conspirator assigned the task to
whitewash the odious deeds of the CIA, but oddly it is not Kaplan
that Irvin and Atwill place under suspicion. It is Albarelli. Apparently
it was Albarelli who attempted to thwart Irvin's research into Gordon
Wasson's ties to the CIA:

An
example of how Wasson’s activities for the CIA have been kept hidden is
the work of MK-ULTRA “expert” and author Hank Albarelli, a former
lawyer for the Carter administration and Whitehouse who also worked for
the Treasury Department. Though Albarelli presents himself to the public
as a MK-ULTRA ‘whistleblower’, he apparently attempted to derail
Irvin’s investigation into Gordon Wasson.

But
wait a minute. If Albarelli has been outed by Irvin and Atwill as a
disinfo agent then why is he cited as the sole source of "evidence"
that Albert Hofmann assisted the CIA in dosing a French village with
LSD? Might not this also be disinformation? At the very least this is an
example of extremely sloppy research by Irvin and Atwill. To use a
source which these authors themselves go on to discredit in order to
attempt to slag Hofmann is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. One
wonders how much more of Irvin and Atwill's research, if one was
feeling particularly masochistic and had a ton of time to sift through
it, would similarly transmute into shit.

Leveling The Playing Field For Everyone

Fortunately, though, Jan Irvin has education on his side. Real education
-- not the kind we plebs get from ordinary public schools and
universities. Jan has rediscovered the Trivium -- the ancient arts of
Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric, which along with the Quadrivium make up the
Seven Liberal Arts. On his website we can listen to a genuinely
fascinating series of podcasts on the Trivium, largely presented by Gene
Odening.

In the first interview
with Odening we are told that the Trivium is the educational method,
ancient in origin, which is even now taught at the boarding schools of
the elite. The purpose of the Trivium is to develop critical thinking.
It essentially is a tool to see through the bullshit, to expose the
conditioning, propaganda and manipulation that we all face. So far so
good. A foolproof methodology of critical thinking is definitely
desired. The three arts are conveniently broken down as follows:

[1] General Grammar(Answers the question of the Who, What, Where, and the When of a subject.) Discovering and ordering facts of reality comprises basic, systematic Knowledge

[2] Formal Logic(Answers the Why of a subject.)
Developing the faculty of reason in establishing valid [i.e.,
non-contradictory] relationships among facts, systematic Understanding [3] Classical Rhetoric(Provides the How of a subject.)
Applying knowledge and understanding expressively comprises Wisdom or,
in other words, it is systematically useable knowledge and understanding

Sounds
great. Comprehensive and handily applicable. It actually sounds
strangely familiar. Oh, I remember where I heard something like this --
in a talk by Terence McKenna:

The world is so tricky that without rules and razors you are as
lambs led to the slaughter. And I'm speaking of the world as we have
always found it. Add onto that the world based on techniques of mass
psychology, advertising, political propaganda, image
manipulation...There are many forces that seek to victimize us. And the
only way through this is rational analysis of what is being presented.
It amazes me that this is considered a radical position. I mean, this is
what used to be called a good liberal education. And then somewhere
after the sixties when the government decided that universal public
education only created mobs milling in the streets calling for human
rights, education ceased to serve the goal of producing an informed
citizenry. And instead we took an authoritarian model: the purpose of
education is to produce unquestioning consumers with an alcoholic
obsession for work. And so it is. [at 12:55 minutes]

Here
McKenna almost sounds as if he listened to Jan Irvin's podcast --
except that this was recorded way back in 1994. The similarities between
the two, though, are striking. By "a good liberal education"
Terence is undoubtedly referring to the Seven Liberal Arts which
includes the Trivium. His concerns are also identical to Irvin and
Odening. He is advocating a "rational analysis of what is being presented," a system of "rules and razors," in order to deflect the "many forces that seek to victimize us."

The
one glaring difference between Irvin and McKenna on this point is their
view of the sixties. According to McKenna students and other protesters
gained their critical view of the establishment through a public liberal education and the use of psychedelics. According to Irvin and
Atwill it was the use of psychedelics and the lack of a proper liberal
education that so definitely duped the sixties generation. How could
such divergent opinions be both generated by two seemingly sincere
advocates of critical thinking and the Trivium?

But
beyond this how could McKenna, that outed agent and psychedelic
snake-oil salesman, be an advocate for the Trivium at all? Is he just
lying? Are we to assume that every time he tells his audience to
"question authority -- even my own" and "try it for yourself" that he
actually means "do exactly what I say"?

There may be a
solution to this puzzle. As we progress through Irvin's "Trivium
Education" podcasts we come to a very fascinating interview
with Kevin Cole, a Trivium Method student of Odening and Irvin. Cole
relates how in his own research he discovered that the Classical Trivium
and the Seven Liberal Arts were actually used as a complete system of control by the elite for centuries.

The
Classical Trivium, we finally learn, is entirely different from the
Trivium Method (perhaps we should start to call it the Trivium Method™?)
which was developed by Odening and interpreted by Irvin in order to free minds rather than to enslave them.

It's
obvious, therefore, that McKenna is only an advocate of the Classical
Trivium and not the liberating Trivium Method™. The similarity of
language and purported methodology is only there to deceive. That clears
up that. But hold on a sec -- weren't we told on the first of these
podcasts that the Trivium Method™ was ancient and that it is still
taught to the children of the elite? A confused commenter to the Cole
episode, and a now distraught former acolyte, expresses similar
concerns:

To be honest, this upset me quite a bit. This shed light on the
enormous amount of bullshit about the classical trivium that was spewed
for a few years by Gnostic Media and Tragedy And Hope. Here are some questions I have for you:What form of education, if not the classical trivium, is taught to
the “elite?” It seems that all of your previous claims about the trivium
being taught to the “elite” was pure conjecture.If we are inherently free, why do we need a “liberating” education?Why was Gene Odening so misinformed about this? Why should I, after
watching this video, continue to use the “trivium method” which is now
so clearly a misunderstanding of the true classical trivium on the part
of a “self-taught scholar?”These are only some of MANY questions that need to be answered. I’m
sure I’m speaking on the behalf of many others who feel the same about
this issue. There’s been a lot of conjecture and bullshit, and we demand
answers.

Jan Irvin, master of Rhetoric, responds with his usual balance of wisdom, subtlety and eloquence:

We
have ALWAYS explained that the trivium was used for mind control. If
you haven’t caught on to that, you weren’t paying attention. There was 3
years of grammar alone that had to be done to flush all of the
misapplication of the trivium out. Gene has always explained from day
one that it was used for control. He never said it wasn’t. That was the
ENTIRE PURPOSE of releasing it! To level the playing field for EVERYONE!
If you want to be controlled by those who misuse it, then don’t study
it and live in ignorance. It seems you weren’t even paying attention to
what this video had to say, as the video explained that what Gene has
put forth is the first time it’s been used for FREEDOM. Can you show us
were we haven’t said it was used for control by the elites?

Ah... so the trivium is not the trivium. There is no contradiction here. The trivium can be used to
both liberate and ensnare. Kind of like a good trip and a bad trip? If
we accept, though, that Odening's new Trivium Method™ is a way to liberate the masses while the old Classical Trivium is used for mind
control there is no need to additionally accept that the TM™ is ancient
and therefore well-tested. Like any new system of thought, or any
ancient system, every aspect of it must be held up to full scrutiny.

Quisquidquandoubicur

Irvin
is fond of saying, for example, "do not put your Logic before your
Grammar." By this he means to not approach a situation with a ready-made
theory of why it is like it is. Instead we must first compile and examine all of the available facts of who, what, where, and when
(the Grammar) and only then can we attempt an explanation (the Logic). A
valid explanation can only arise if the basic facts do not contradict
one another.

A problem emerges, however, with determining these "facts." If we say, for example, that who Aldous Huxley is, is an evil promoter of eugenics and world government then we already have reasons why we
have concluded this. We have already put our Logic before our Grammar.
Each fact is at first a theory. But a supporter of the TM™ might say
that this is acceptable because our reasons for concluding that Huxley
is a supporter of eugenics and world government are also based on facts
-- Huxley's family ties to the Eugenics movement etc.

This
might all be valid. These facts might in turn be very sound, but we
still would have reasons for accepting them as facts. A pure fact
though, pure Grammar, the whats and whos and wheres, may be impossible
to separate from why. This may seem like nitpicking, but over and
over I've seen the no-logic-before-grammar clause being used by Irvin
in an attempt to out argue his opponents. It doesn't hold water.

As an example, if we accept as fact, as Grammar,
that Aldous Huxley is a tireless advocate for totalitarian rule then
the letter he wrote to George Orwell, cited by Irvin and Atwill, discussing which of their dystopic visions is more accurate, will strike us as being very
sinister. If in contrast we view both Brave New World and 1984 as novels intending to warnpeople against creeping totalitarianism then our reading of this letter will be very different.

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war — in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.

If we have already concluded as fact, as Grammar,
that Albert Hofmann is a CIA agent then it is easy to believe that he
helped poison a French village with LSD, even though our only source for
this "fact" is from a writer that we have already discredited.

Like
every other human theory, Irvin and Atwill's theory on the manufacture
of the counterculture is supported with cherry-picked "facts." This is
not so much a condemnation of their theory as it is to state that they
are, like anyone else, all too human. The application of the Trivium
Method™ no more guarantees the truth of their theory than does the
application of the apologetics of Thomas Aquinas.

What
happens when "facts" are encountered that don't appear to fit this
theory? What do we do, for instance, with Mae Brussell's well-reasoned theory
that the Manson murders were an Establishment psyop designed to
disorientate and discredit the growing counterculture which directly
threatened elite control?

If, as according to Irvin and
Atwill, the hippies were "manufactured" in order to transform culture
then why would TPTB try to bring down their own creation just a couple
of years after it gained mainstream attention? Was Mae simply wrong? Was
she also an agent?

And what about the conservative
reaction in the Reagan eighties against all vestiges of the former
counterculture? What about the "Moral Majority"? What about the
promotion of "family values"? What about the "culture wars"?

Are
Reagan and Pat Robertson the good guys here? Did the CIA's program fail
or did another phase of their manipulation kick in -- the clichéd and
misunderstood Hegelian dialectic, perhaps? And then there were the
nineties when the psychedelic pied pipers like McKenna and others were
once again set loose to dose the imaginations of a whole new generation. Did the Agenda move back on track or did it even more come off the rails?

I'm
not saying that these facts cannot be worked into the theory of Irvin
and Atwill. Absolutist conspiracy theories can usually absorb any fact
that is thrown at them. As far as I know, however, they have
not yet been shoehorned into the mix, and when they are the resulting mess
is not necessarily going to be logical.

Uncertain and Incomplete

And
yet increasingly in recent years logic is equated with certainty.
Debunkers and "skeptics" of every stripe are on the march.
"Pseudoscience," claims of the paranormal, conspiracy theories,
spirituality, alternative medicine -- the whole ball of "woo" is in
the crosshairs. In the face of this, into the viper's den of pop-up fallacies and rational wikis, steps fearless researcher and podcaster extraordinaire, James Corbett.

In
a largely overlooked Aug. 2012 podcast entitled "Logic Is Not Enough,"
Corbett dares to present a bit of heresy -- humans are really not all
that logical and logic itself can only take you so far. He illustrates
this by simply showing how even the most logically sound argument can
reach a false conclusion if its premises are wrong.

Beyond
the scope of formal logic, Corbett explains that Heisenberg's
Uncertainty Principle in physics and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems in
mathematics both demonstrate that even within these hardboiled fields of
study unpredictability and indeterminacy rear their ugly heads. With or
without logic, certainty is elusive.

Buckminster Fuller, in a conversation from 1967, takes this all much further than Heisenberg (or Corbett!):

Heisenberg said that observation alters the phenomenon observed. T.S.
Eliot said that studying history alters history. Ezra Pound said that
thinking in general alters what is thought about. Pound's formulation is
the most general, and I think it's the earliest. [quoted in Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era]

By
studying the history of the sixties counterculture, Atwill and Irvin are
altering history. By thinking and writing about their theory, I am
altering it. Both alterations are fine and should be expected. The
problem arises when we think that we have captured the history or the idea.

To tie a living thing down, to analyse it and to categorize it, is to change it. And by attempting to do so it changes us.
It should not take a physicist or a mathematician to "prove" this. And it is, of course, the poets who would realize this first. (I'll discuss in
depth the wisdom and folly of Ezra Pound in the second part of this
essay.)

In his podcast, Corbett
reminds us that much of the "Agenda" aims to refashion irrational
individuals into logical machines. Elite control freaks like George Bush
Sr. avow that ''The enemy is unpredictability. The enemy is instability.''
To be truly logical is to be entirely predictable, entirely stable. A
logical person, a person well-trained in the Trivium Method let's say,
can be counted on to say and do the logical thing at every step. He or
she is not overly emotional, not contradictory in his or her actions and
thoughts, and is entirely stable. A clockwork orange.

The usual argument on why the CIA gave up
its research on LSD and other psychedelics is precisely because they
have unpredictable effects. They can be used to decondition people but
they are very poor at reliably reconditioning people. Who in the world
has ever had a predictable psychedelic trip?

Irvin and
Atwill are correct to warn us about how post-Freudian sorcerers of schlock like
Edward Bernays use advertising and propaganda to target
us emotionally, scramble our logic, and to direct the course of
culture. Irvin and Atwill's attack on the state education system and the
entertainment industry as instruments to "dumb down" is indispensable.
Critical thinking and reason, more than ever, are required.

There is a broader way to look at all of this, however. In Corbett's podcast episode we briefly hear a clip
from an interview with cognitive scientist, George Lackoff. Lackoff
explains that reason, contrary to what was thought in the 18th century
and what is still accepted by political and social institutions even
now, is not fully conscious, unemotional or subject to formal logic.
Instead it is embodied, it is driven by empathy for others over
"enlightened self-interest", and it frequently perceives metaphorically
not logically.

An individual human is by no means a
logical machine, nor is he or she entirely driven by irrational
emotions. We are complex even contradictory creatures. It may be that
there is no possible way, in disagreement with Huxley and Orwell, for
our psyches to be fully bridled. On the other hand, it may be equally
impossible to develop a foolproof method for preventing attempts to
bridle them.

All methods fail for some and succeed for
others. Psychedelics aren't the whole answer, neither is the Trivium
Method™. Contradictions are out there and in here always. As Walt
Whitman wrote:

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

The conspiracy, the conspiracies,
are also contradictory. They are also embodied, emotional, metaphoric,
fluid, unpredictable, multitudinous. So is the counterculture. So is a
psychedelic trip. So is Jan Irvin. So is this post. The pop-up fallacy
machine would likely blow a gasket processing what I've written here. I
really don't care.

Corbett mentions one last fallacy
that might help me out: the fallacy fallacy. This is the false
presumption that just because a claim is poorly argued, and/or it
contains many fallacies, that the claim itself is wrong. It may just be,
though, that I'm making a fallacy fallacy fallacy: the equally false
presumption that the fallacy fallacy somehow excuses poor argumentation
and/or the use of fallacies. There's a conspiracy theory for you. Here's
another:

Conspiracy theory, in my humble opinion, is a kind of epistemological cartoon about reality.
Isn't it so simple to believe that things are run by the greys, and
that all we have to do is trade sufficient fetal tissue to them and then
we can solve our technological problems, or isn't it comforting to
believe that the Jews are behind everything, or the Communist Party, or
the Catholic Church, or the Masons. Well, these are epistemological
cartoons, it is kindergarten in the art of amateur historiography.I believe that the truth of the matter is far more terrifying, that
the real truth that dare not speak itself is that no one is in control,
absolutely no one. This stuff is ruled by the equations of dynamics and
chaos. There may be entities seeking control, but to seek control is to
take enormous aggravation upon yourself. It's like trying to control a
dream.

The dream or nightmare may not be
controllable, but it does have a certain structure, a patterned energy, a
flux of phosphenal filaments. And it is both bound and sent spinning by
spaghetti.

23 comments:

As I read your highly informative and entertaining post, it made me increasingly curious (curiouser & curiouser! – Alice) as to whether Joe Atwill or Jan Irvin ever “dropped?” As that other nefarious CIA operative of the sixties, Ken Kesey used to say…

I still believe there is a small chance that Jan is playing a very complicated game, and/or is himself being financed by a very wealthy and cunning organization to essentially play a role, a role we haven't seen in a very long time. I think Irvin's character challenges us to do a few things: stop preaching to the choir, stop settling for the "it's all good" mentality, and to preemptively dissect antagonistic viewpoints before they manifest with full force. The one thing he gets absolutely correct is the existence of a psychedelic elite; McKenna even noted that the people in his lectures belong in such a category, based on education (access to books pre-internet), economic status, nutrition, set and setting, and availability of psychedelics. An elite is still an elite. That being said, the character he is playing is a baffling dichotomy of scholastic accomplishment and absurd conclusion. I think this mirrors those that flip enantiodromia style against psychedelics, psychedelic thinking, and those who crawl back to Faith in Religion (imagine if a Joe Rogan type had twice the audience and found Jesus, born again? How many could he bring with him? It happened to Larry Flynt and Bob Dylan). All in all the world is certainly better with Jan Irvin in it because, oddly enough, like Crowley, he is arguing for a stricter examination of the whole picture. Some of his conclusions are baffling, but he puts the most importance in how you get there…...

I totally agree. Whatever game Jan is or is not playing he is making us all think. Any attempt to squeeze reality into a simplified system, and the Timewave is also this, will always provoke a reexamination of complexity. And there's also that famous proverb from Hell: "Opposition is true friendship."

It was Jesus at the last supper saying "Take Eat. Do this in remembrance of me" as he took the psilocybread mushroom/Holy manna and gave thanks to God and ate it(1cor11:23-27). And before Jesus was Moses who said "This is the psilocybread/Holy manna that the Lord has given us to eat(Exodus 16:15) Yes Jesus and Moses were indeed partaking/promoting psilocybin mushrooms as a means to access God's Holy Presence. Psilocybin is the communion sacrament/the communication prayer sacrament that is eaten to access the Holy Presence of God/God's Holy voice in a spiritual place that the bible refers to as heaven. Heaven is the location of God's Presence that can only be accessed through the psilocybin mushrooms. Heaven is not a place we go when we die a physical death. Heaven is a place we go when we eat psilocybin mushrooms and get launched into God's Holy Presence. Jesus taught us how to pray GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY PSILOCYBREAD. The last supper prayer sacrament is indeed prayer bread. It is the bread that Jesus broke at the last supper when he said TAKE EAT DO THIS IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME(1cor23-27), This bread is described in great detail in Exodus chapter 16 as being small and round and appearing on the face of the wilderness when the morning dew lifts. The KJV is the most original/authentic English bible that we can study that reveals most accurately the psilocybread moooshroom. In Ezekiel chapter 4:15-17 it indicates that the Holy communion prayer bread is to be prepared in cowdung. Psilocybin mushrooms are the only visionary mushrooms that grow in cowdung. There is absolute proof in the KJV bible that the manna or bread or God is indeed psilocybin mushrooms. I don't want you to simply believe me. I want you and everyone else to do the research themselves. God's Holy garden contains Holy prayer bread mushrooms that he created for us to access his Holy Presence so that we could pray directly to him so that our prayers can actually be heard and answered. If we are not in His Presence when we pray then our prayers will not be heard or answered but if we are in His Presence he will hear us and we will hear him and he will indeed answer our prayers. We must have the prayer/communion/communication sacrament to access his Holy Presence and to dine and communicate with Him. This is what is wrong with modern day Christianity. People don't understand how to pray. We must have the communion prayer sacrament in order to have a direct link to God's Presence. Look up SHEWBREAD on an online bible dictionary. It means BREAD OF PRESENCE. SHEWBREAD=Psilocybread=Holy Manna = Prayer bread sacrament. Christ offers us his love and his forgiveness but he does ask of us to eat Holy bread in remembrance of Him.x 1 Corinthians 11:23 For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: x1 Corinthians 11:24 And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.xExodus 16:14 And when the dew that lay was gone up(time of day), behold, upon the face of the wilderness(location) there lay a small(size) round(shape) thing.... xExodus 16:15 And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.x Ezekiel 4:15 Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.xThere is only one small round thing that appears in cow dung on the face of the wilderness when the morning dew lifts. It is the psilocybin mushroom. Psilocybin mushrooms are the only visionary mushrooms that grow in cow's dung.﻿

God wants us to eat psilocybread mushrooms daily/continually/always....xMatthew 6:11 Give us this day our daily bread. Luke 11:3 Give us day by day our daily bread.x2 Chronicles 2:4 Behold, I build an house to the name of the LORD my God, to dedicate it to him, and to burn before him sweet incense, and for the continual shewbread, and for the burnt offerings morning and evening, on the sabbaths, and on the new moons, and on the solemn feasts of the LORD our God. This is an ordinance for ever to Israel.x Numbers 4:7 And upon the table of shewbread they shall spread a cloth of blue, and put thereon the dishes, and the spoons, and the bowls, and covers to cover withal: and the continual bread shall be thereon:x 2 Samuel 9:7 And David said unto him, Fear not: for I will surely shew thee kindness for Jonathan thy father's sake, and will restore thee all the land of Saul thy father; and thou shalt eat bread at my table continuallyExodus 25:30 And thou shalt set upon the table shewbread before me alwaysMushLoveDaily/Continually/Always!!http://youtu.be/FuOkThzvP54﻿

The mechanics of Jan Irvin are genius the more I think about it. An academic psychedelic head who provides all the answers simply breeds a horde of followers; an academic psychedelic head who provides the wrong answers breeds a horde of students, challengers to the conclusions that don't add up.

I'm not sure if my timeline is correct, but Jan's work seems to have changed right around the time he was courted by Joe Rogan and appeared on his podcast. If you listen to that show (I am only aware of one appearance) it is a disaster. If I were Jan I would have walked away from that show feeling sick to my stomach, and I would have been very afraid at the Nu-Psychedelic army represented by Rogan's schtick. I can see Jan coming to a few frightening conclusions after that….

This actually makes some sense. If nothing else it provides an out for Jan. At some future point he could announce, "Ah, you finally got it. Welcome to the Higher Mysteries, my grasshoppers." Presumably, if this were the case, he would only make such an announcement after we cracked the code, after the psychedelic movement dejockified and smartened up once more. We may all be a part of psychedelic sage Jan's grand strategy for universal awakening.

Having dropped with some folks at Sensei, I can speak experienced. Can I speak enlightened, yes. Is the psy of the 60'70'80' important for the planet and gnosis me thinks, hell yes. Laurel canyon had it going on? No more than some hippies from Oregon. The walls melt for a reason, bring the problematic ego to some sense of community and life force. Shine forth by day. Dennis

I only skipped this one, after the quote from Dennis McKenna I felt too exasperated - either he's very naive or he's being disingenuous by suggesting that the intrigue and manipulation would at such an obvious level. I haven't read Jan's stuff and it may well be that he's drawing too literal, simplistic a picture (likely), deliberately or otherwise. Conspiracy/espionage research can be so overwhelming when the extent if it begins to be seen that the temptation to take refuge in absolutism ("It's all a Plot!") is near-irresistible, because the alternative is to try and understand and convey every nuance and intricacy, which would require the sort of wisdom that not even the manipulators themselves possess (as individuals at least).

For the record, I found the refutation of Irvin's contention about McKenna wholly unconvincing, and the idea that TM might joke about something while at the same time be admitting to it went unexplored, even tho, as we've seen most recently in the case of Jimmy Savile, it is not uncommon for undercover agents to want to brag about their power. But whether or not TM or anyone was a knowing agent of this or that agency or agenda is less important than how they may have been used by same. And McKenna, like Huxley, like Leary, like Manson, certainly seems to have been useful.

Regarding this comment: If, as according to Irvin and Atwill, the hippies were "manufactured" in order to transform culture then why would TPTB try to bring down their own creation just a couple of years after it gained mainstream attention?

No offense but this is a bit like an amateur chess player wonder why a chess master went ahead and moved his knight in such a silly way that he lost it, and then three moves later took his opponent's queen. I don't think conspiracy theories ever make sense if you try and understand them within the terms laid down by ordinary social awareness and in the context of a few years, or even decades. The way that works for me is to look at them through a psychological lens, as I suggested earlier about the "good cop/bad cop" routine being used collectively. The same principles that work on individuals (eg, Stockholm syndrome) may also be applied to groups of people, and entire nations.Lloyd deMause writes about how a period of liberation leads one of social restriction, and vice versa, and understanding this principle and knowing how to manipulate it may be behind a great many of the events and movements being shaped, which leaves plenty of room for the supposed random element to give them the flavor of the spontaneous and authentic, as the counterculture had. But as long as the general overall outcome, psychologically, is the same, then the Powers That Be, like the master chess player, are ready with their next move, and so on.

As to it being malign or not, I think it's best to approach that question as if we were talking about human beings somewhat like ourselves, with conscious desires underneath which work unconscious drives, the latter being what determines the outcome of their plans and agendas. The nostalgia for ancient Greece for example, may be sourced in the desire to have sex with children, and all the master plans of the elite may be directed towards this single personal end, and everything it entails. For example. At the very least, it brings the octopus down to manageable proportions.

Keep in mind that my questions in the article are not (merely) sarcastic/rhetorical. I'm genuinely fishing for answers. You came up with a theory, a variation on the old conspiracist "Hegelian dialectic" shibboleth, and I appreciate that. Here's another version: the design from the get-go was to divide the U.S. along Culture War lines. Each side was prodded and provoked to completely despise the other. This has continued to the present day and virtually ensures that a Civil War can be very easily sparked off to prevent a situation where the people unite and truly start to rise up against their masters.

Such theories can be multiplied endlessly, especially if we are convinced that we are dealing with a purported "chess master." He literally could have anything up his sleeves, and while we might be looking two moves ahead he already knows the endgame. I understand that. Please do not think I'm overlooking that.

But wouldn't another strategy of the "chess master" be to project an image of his invincibility, even if it was only a projection? If the "master's" opponent was convinced that he was essentially doomed from the start the chances of that opponent fumbling is much higher. Instead of sticking with strategies that had worked very effectively in the past, the opponent, thinking that the "master" had seen through these schemes from the outset, would resort to moves that he was not at all confident about. Or the "chess master" might trick the opponent into thinking that he had no real options left, that it was better to give up now instead of prolonging his eventual demise, even though the opponent was actually in a pretty good position to win.

This is basically the tactic that HAL successfully deploys in 2001. Frank is so convinced of HAL's inherent superiority that he gives up before realizing that HAL is cheating.

So this is what I'm exploring. Why is it that Rockefeller-funded organizations like the John Birchers are the ones that refashioned the old Illuminati conspiracy theory for our time? Again, another genuine question. It seems, more and more, that the purpose of "conspiracy theory" is to hoodwink people into thinking that all forms of resistance -- political organization, alternative lifestyles, individual creativity, art movements, mystical experience, even psychedelic exploration -- were actually manufactured by the omnipotent ELITE. Is it not reasonable to suggest that this could all be bunkum? That the whole "revelation of the method" is a trick to make us lay down the best weapons at our service, and to distrust and ridicule others that still use them?

Whatever the validity of Irvin's theories, then, I think this other possibility must also be taken into account. It would certainly also be easy to make the case that Irvin himself, unwittingly or not, is being used by TPTB to get us to disempower ourselves. Forget psychedelics, forget visionary experience, ignore visionary writers and artists of the past, don't bother to explore your own imagination. All of this has been co-opted, planned and manipulated for centuries before we were born.

And maybe all of this is true. I certainly don't rule it out. I also don't rule out that McKenna was literally recruited by whatever intelligence lies behind the Mushroom. I was serious about this. The conspiracies, benign and malign and neither, are in all probability way more complex than anything speculated upon here. I actually thought Dennis' comment that his brother's Timewave and Irvin's megaconspiracy theory were very similar is highly profound in this regard.

You wrote: "...the alternative is to try and understand and convey every nuance and intricacy, which would require the sort of wisdom that not even the manipulators themselves possess (as individuals at least)." This is exactly the direction where I think research should be going.

The film "Omega Man" provides a nice image of Woodstock as Irvin, which in turn presents the difficulty of the superficial interpretation. When Heston's "Omega Man" sparks up a generator in an abandon theater to watch the epic "Woodstock" movie, he seems to be looking back at a point in history that marks the beginning-of-the-end of so-called Civilization. At the same time, the Omega Man is himself a symbol of the failure of the capital and democratic version Civilization.

This pairing seems to be a paradox but it is not. Woodstock may appear to represent a socially destructive trend, but in fact is a cypher for the primordial stew from which human reality emerges. The same applies for the Omega Man. The character stands in for the complete failure of the post-industrial human complex, and yet serves well as a rejuvenator of the same.

Out of this come the cyclical proclamations of Marxism--a cycle driven by the promise of upcoming torment. But the Marxist cycle too is a parody of its own modelling, because as sure as the Marxist model keeps on "revolving", few notice that the wheel is not touching the ground.

Thus, at least to me, Irvin becomes an entertainer rather than a philosopher. Corbett is the much better philosopher... but philosophy is a consolation. The resounding truth that "no one knows whats going on" is kind of like a Lynch movie, and this type of transcendental observation does not provide the meat and potato deep down fill you up goodness desired by folks who actually desire to see "the good guys win".

The sort of theater that galvanizes the everyday emotions is driven by the desire for the vindication of its audience. Justice is what people think they want, and Irvin delivers the trumped up narrative as required.

Contrarily, Truth does not vindicate, but implicates to the into formless depths of dharma.

People DO NOT want the Truth, so in the spirit of a top entertainer, Irvin delivers.

Jan Irvin is (or comes across as) quite possibly an Agent Provocateur, working for the DEA or related agencies in the "Intelligence Community". If he is, he is doing his job well by sowing paranoia, suspicion, and turmoil. Well played!

He goes after dead people, who are well known not able to defend themselves. That in itself is pretty sad.

I hear you and I've thought this myself. I'm hesitant to make this conclusion, though. Even if he isn't an agent actively he could be one unwittingly. So might I! It's really difficult to make this call and it's interesting that it's a judgement that JI applies to others all of the time.

I used to defend Jan quite a bit, but when his self contradictory behavior was turned in my actual direction, I had to quit on him. Under a video where he discusses how you should not get too emotional, how you should always cooly and calmly assess all the data, etc., he just started spewing hate, bigotry and intolerance at me on this ridiculous level just because I was nicely trying to discuss a few things. He acts like his brain is short circuited, and if it's true he did as many shrooms as he claims he did, then maybe his brain really is fried. He does treat the trivium like how an ex meth addict turned christian treats "the lord." And now he's attracting equally obnoxious and arrogant materialist/logical positivist types who love nothing more than to slam things with "witty" commentary. Jan loves to snark with them at people who are simply trying to bring up points of research that might be at the very least worth looking at. But no. Jan goes against practically every single thing he lays out in his own ideology and method of "collecting and assessing information." Say one thing, do another. Why? Well because he can. He's special. He can get away with literally everything he says you shouldn't be able to get away with, and he's so far up his own rear end in this way that it's hard to find a place to start in rebutting anything... because you're just so, in a way, lost. You can't believe the sheer level of contradiction in behavior you're witnessing in this person, while at the same time another part of you wants to actually "engage" them and make your point.

He's actively censoring my input in the discussion where he was blowing up on me, so now I'm done with the guy. I used to defend him, but now I'm done. He's long disappeared up his own contradictory ass, and the dead eyed tough guy can rot there.

Thanks for this interesting post. I too have tried to engage Jan on the subject and was met with explosive anger in response to what I thought were reasonable questions.. He kept telling me that my "religious leader" TMK was up to that sneaky business... If he only knew. I can't help but pay attention to his wild-ass theories though!

This gives a coherent narrative of what really went on. Still don't know if Mckenna and Kesey were fully aware of what the government was doing and in on it or were ignorant dupes. But it does explain what the CIA was really up to.https://www.lewrockwell.com/2001/04/michael-e-kreca/how-the-us-government-created-the-drug-problem-in-the-usa/